


the ruin of his house

by estora



Series: Rumours and Sightings: Daud [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Family Reunions, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Not Canon Compliant - Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Public Nudity, but it's non-sexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:55:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29307633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estora/pseuds/estora
Summary: There had been a time when I thought Daud told me everything. He trusted me with a blade, his powers, and, sometimes, his thoughts, until I turned the blade on him, used his powers against my brothers and sisters, and sold his thoughts to Delilah. This old woman with hard features and a cruel tongue is right to want me dead for what I did to her son. I’d want me dead, too, if someone else had done to Daud what I did to him.Billie Lurk accepts a job, confronts her past, and contemplates her future. There are always choices; she might finally be ready to make her own.
Relationships: Daud & Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster, Daud (Dishonored) & Original Female Character(s), Past Delilah Copperspoon/Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster
Series: Rumours and Sightings: Daud [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2152542
Comments: 16
Kudos: 16





	the ruin of his house

_“No one will ever know exactly what it took to save Emily Kaldwin from a living death as Delilah's puppet. No one except the Outsider, who watches everything, and thinks his own dark thoughts, and speaks to few in any generation. I've learned that our choices always matter to someone, somewhere. And sooner or later, in ways we can't always fathom, the consequences come back to us. I came from Serkonos to Dunwall as a boy. Made my living as a killer; one of the few who've heard the Outsider's voice. I murdered an Empress, but saved her daughter, who will one day rule the Empire. Those were my choices. I'm ready for –”_

The Duke of Serkonos turns the audiograph off, Daud’s voice cutting out like a candle snuffed out by the wind. He braces his hands on his desk and leans forwards. “Explain it.”

Perhaps he thinks he’s intimidating, and I’m sure to most people he is. Corvo Attano, the former Royal Protector and winner of the Blade Verbena; the Masked Felon of Dunwall and Marked by the Outsider, and the only man I’ve ever known to best Daud in combat. If nothing else, he deserves my respect if he can’t inspire my fear.

“It’s fairly self-explanatory,” I drawl. “Seems to me that I should be asking _you_ to explain how you ended up with one of my personal belongings.”

The Duke must find my attitude amusing rather than impertinent. The corner of his mouth twitches, barely hidden by his beard, and he pushes back off the desk. He yanks the audiograph from the player and turns around, facing the view of the ocean instead, his fingers trailing across the jagged edges of the card.

Brave of him, to turn his back to me. Could be a test, to see if I’ll take the bait.

“The Empress considered it a matter of interest to the crown,” he explains.

I had one rule on my ship: don’t enter the Captain’s quarters. I guess Emily decided the rules no longer applied the moment she learned who I was.

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Even if I did,” I say, “I wouldn’t tell you.”

“You think I plan to hunt him down and question him? Kill him?”

“Certainly doesn’t seem like you plan to thank him.”

Attano barks an incredulous laugh. “ _Thank_ him?”

“If he hadn’t gotten involved, how long would it have taken you to realise that the person staring out of young Emily’s eyes wasn’t your beloved daughter?” I ask. “Days? Months? Years, even, if she played the part well enough?”

Attano tosses the card to the table between us, like it’s garbage and his hands are tarnished from holding it. “I don’t care what’s on this audiograph. I don’t care if he retired to a vineyard in Cullero or got stabbed to death in an alleyway in Tyvia. All I need to know is if _you_ have anything to do with him, with that life, _now_.”

Me? This is about _me_ , all of a sudden?

I pick the card up, as though it’s made of glass. It’s objectively a worthless piece of cardboard and plastic, a relic of a period of my life I should have long cast behind me and forgotten, but I’d spent hundreds of coins on ‘Lost’ posters, and I’d been prepared to pay thousands of coins more to whomever returned it.

Foolish. Sentimental.

It’s all I have left of him.

“I betrayed him to Delilah, and he let me walk away with my life,” I say, tracing the divots of the card that represent the tenor of Daud’s rough voice. It’s starting to fray around the edges from age and overuse. “Because of that, I was able to help the Empress when you couldn’t. I left that life behind because he set me _free_.”

He stares at me for a long time with those dark Serkonan eyes of his; Emily Kaldwin’s eyes. It was an open secret in Dunwall when Empress Jessamine was still alive, but now I wonder how anyone could ever have doubted Emily’s paternity.

Whatever he searched my face for, he must have found it, because he huffs and strokes a hand across his beard, hiding a small smile. “I’m prepared to offer you a deal, Billie Lurk.”

I like deals.

“There’s a cult wreaking havoc in Serkonos. The Eyeless Gang.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“Neither had I until a few days ago, but they’re powerful, dangerous, and very well-organised. They worship the Outsider and are involved in human sacrifice, black magic rituals, the lot. Last thing this Empire needs is another Delilah, and this is a ripe breeding ground for the likes of her.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Investigate them. I want to know which districts they’re operating from, who their leaders are, and where their money comes from. And then, I want you to put an end to them.”

“In exchange for…”

“A clean slate.”

Well. That’s awfully tempting. “Throw in a few thousand coins and I’ll accept.”

Attano reaches into the drawer of his desk, pulls out a bag of coins, and drops it on the table between us. “Half now. Half when you’re done. You walk away, you betray me, and I’ll make sure your face is plastered on every wall of every street in every fucking city of the entire Empire.”

Emily was a naïve brat who grew on me. Corvo Attano is just a giant fucking prick. I think I kind of like him. “Where do I start?”

Attano slides a silvergraph across to me. “With him.”

It takes me a few seconds to realise what – who – I’m looking at. The image is poor quality, blurred, taken in bad lighting and crap exposure, but I’d never mistake the man’s face, not those hard eyes, not that scar.

_Daud._

“Where did you get this?” I ask.

“Found his ugly mug pinned to a black-market betting table, for an underground fighting ring associated with the Eyeless.” Attano tilts his head at me. Cocky bastard – probably picked that move up from the Outsider, Void knows I heard Daud bitch about it enough back in the day. “Still want the job?”

I stare down at the old man’s face. He looks pained, or angry, or both. “Do you want me to kill him?”

“I want you to find out how and why he’s involved with this cult. If I don’t like the answer, I’ll put him down myself.”

If Attano touches a hair on Daud’s head, he’ll be the second Duke of Serkonos dead by my hand.

He doesn’t smirk, exactly, but he wears something close to it when I stand and hold out my hand for him to shake it. “Good luck, Lurk.”

Yeah. I’ll need it.

* * *

_Billie. Or Meagan. Or whatever you go by these days, I don’t know anymore. It was easy to pretend we didn’t know each other when you were Meagan. We agreed to respect both our new lives and not dredge up bad memories. So what are you doing?_

_Yeah. I saw him. Two years ago, here, in Karnaca. He was staying at some old witch’s house in Batista. I didn’t bother him, and he didn’t bother me._

_He stopped killing, like he said he would. But he made an exception for Delilah. I just hope you’re not another exception. Unlike her, I don’t think you’ll come back from a sword through the throat._

**_–T_ **

* * *

Fortunately I know where to start, thanks to Thomas. He’d warned me to leave it alone – not in direct words, but he implied I’d be stupid to seek Daud out, which in his eyes would be committing a crime worse than murder; the irony there being that Thomas never considered murder to be particularly serious. Seems to be working out just fine for him so far, so I’m not sure what the moral there is.

Some old witch’s house in Batista, his letter said. It’s easier to find than I’d expected, the local legends about a blind Pandyssian witch guiding me through the silver-dust streets into the heart of a district to an apothecary. Daud lived _here_ , in this dusty windswept corner of Karnaca. Strange that he would choose to live for so many years with an old woman, a blind one at that. Not a witch – I’d know, I’d sense it. That’s something that never truly left me, even this long after I’d turned my back on Delilah and the magic she offered me. Daud’s Mark and the arcane bond reminded me of the ocean, of the great leviathans that dwelled in our seas, hunted by men and tortured for their oil to keep the cities alive. It felt natural to use, intuitive and gentle, leaving only exhaustion in its wake if I over-exerted myself. Delilah’s magic, like all witches’ magics, smelled as sweet as a rose – but the aftertaste at the back of my throat was as bitter as poison, and its touch pricked as painfully as the thorns.

There is no magic in this area, and anyone who knew Daud the way I did would know he’d never willingly live with a witch anyway. Doesn’t stop people on the street from calling her one. The Blind Witch of Batista; she’s renowned for her poisons. _My mother warned me never to make an enemy of a witch_ , Daud had told me, one of the rare occasions he’d spoken of the woman who bore and raised him. She’d been a source of endless curiosity to me back then. I’d wondered what she was like – what sort of woman could produce a man such as he, and why he had left her behind like the rest of his past. He never said. I presumed her dead, until one of the locals clears things up:

“Daud? The witch’s son? Yeah, I knew him. He turned up about fifteen years ago, started helping the old woman out in her shop. Decent man, except that he spent almost every morning naked on his balcony. I had to see his cock every summer for the past fourteen years.”

Long days in the sun. The son of a bitch did it.

The man turns introspective, leaning against the handle of his broom. “Never thought I’d miss seeing it swinging in the wind,” he says. “His mother turned into a real fucking bitch again when he left, even worse than she was before. You watch out when you deal with her. She’ll sooner stab you and use your organs for potions than she’ll help you.”

Charming. I thank the man and pay him with a coin of five for his trouble, and knock on the Blind Witch of Batista’s apothecary door.

No answer.

“Hello?” I knock again. “Is anyone –”

The door is yanked open under my fist, and before me – a few inches shorter – stands an old, grizzled woman. Mid to late seventies, if I had to guess, her hair completely grey and curled into a severe bun at the nape of her neck. Her face is hard and weathered with wrinkles, her lips a thin, unimpressed line, and her eyes milky-white and unseeing, the flesh around them scarred and burned.

“Shop’s closed,” she snaps. “Come back in the morning.”

She tries to slam the door shut with the hand that isn’t gripping a cane. I hold my arm out to stop her.

“It’s important,” I say. “I need your help.”

If she could roll her eyes, I’m sure she would. “I charge double for after-hours services,” she says. “What do you want?”

I learned the hard way with Emily that being cryptic and omitting the truth is a one-ticket way to giving people the shits. The old woman looks about – what, seventy-five? Pushing eighty? She’s as frail as Anton was and she might as well not have eyes at all for how blind she is. But her words are sharp and her mind probably equally so. A real fucking bitch, the man said. Honesty is the way to go here.

“I’m looking for Daud,” I say. “My name is Billie Lurk. I –”

The old woman drives the tip of a dagger which had been hidden in the handle of her cane into my gut.

* * *

_Though an ocean and thirty miserable years had separated them, he slips quickly into a strange sort of symbiosis with his mother. They were never terribly physically affectionate in the first instance; now they’re even less so. But they’ll spend hours in each other’s company in complete silence, her working and him reading, or they’ll share a bottle of whisky after dinner and play the old knife game she taught him when he was eight. So far he’s stabbed himself twice in the back of his Marked hand, and he hopes the Outsider heard Jocheved’s cackling laughter as much as he himself felt the pain._

_During the warm seasons, he’s taken to standing on the balcony of his mother’s home with his face to the morning sun, a cigarette between his lips and his body as bare as the day he was born. The neighbours complain, but they’re also afraid of the witch and her Outsider-touched son, and he likes the warmth of the sun on his cock more than he cares about respecting his neighbours’ delicate sensibilities._

_During the cold seasons, he stokes the hearth and watches his mother age before his eyes as he wraps a blanket around her shoulders, once so broad and powerful, now becoming frailer by the year. It reminds him of a cold night at the height of the Month of Ice in Dunwall, when he and his Whalers had gathered around a hearth to roast rats on skewers, laughing at some ridiculous joke that Rulfio had cracked. Thomas and Rinaldo, who’d saved some coin and presented Daud with a book about the myths of Tyvia. Billie, always at his side, her head tilted up at him and a smile on her face as she teased him for getting old when his sword elbow creaked from the cold. He remembers, and his chest aches for what he’s lost. For what he’ll never have again._

_“You’re sulking,” Jocheved says. “Why?”_

_“I’m not sulking.”_

_“You are, and it’s pathetic. Tell me what’s wrong or get over it.”_

_So he tells her about a younger man and a much younger woman, bound not by blood but by something else just as powerful, gently teasing each other and risking neck and limb. He tells her about Billie. Clever, ambitious Billie. Friend and traitor, brave and damaged; Billie as a girl, following him through the night after watching him pick off three targets one after the other within five minutes, her eyes wide not with horror but with fascination. Curiosity. Always so curious, wanting to learn more. He remembers her trailing him, so convinced she was hidden well, all the way back to his base of operations. He remembers her form – self-taught, extremely capable if unrefined – and he remembers seeing something in her that he saw every day in the mirror. The tilt of her stubborn jaw when he confronted her, the fire in her eyes –_ we burn hot, then burn up _– and the reaction it stirred in him. Admiration. A desire to protect. A desire to nourish._

_It was his own fault for thinking of her as something more than just another assassin under his command. Isn’t that the way of things? Master assassin trains a younger generation; the younger generation learns until they think they know better and then betray their teacher. Then they become the teacher to a new generation, and the cycle repeats, over and over and over again, each teacher never believing that kind of treachery will reach them the way they themselves enacted it._

_He’d thought he was different. He hadn’t snatched Billie from the streets the same way the whaler snatched him and other kids, forcing them to pick pockets for valuables then spread their legs for a meagre portion of the coin and food. He hadn’t touched Billie, he hadn’t touched any of his Whalers; he’d shared his magic and his talents and he had tilted his head back and allowed her to drag a shaving blade across the thin skin of his throat because he’d trusted her._

_He should have known. He only had himself to blame for what she did._

_“Did you kill her?”_

_“No.”_

_“You should have,” Jocheved says._

_“I know,” he agrees. “But I...”_

_He couldn’t._

_Jocheved snorts and blindly reaches for him, threading her fingers through his greying hair. He leans into the touch. “And what happens if she comes looking for you, to finish what she started?”_

_Daud doesn’t think she will. He’d shown mercy, he gave her her freedom, and last he heard from Thomas was that she finally got on that ship to become the captain she always wanted to be, pursuing the dream he’d stolen from her when he placed a blade in her hand. But Delilah poisoned her heart and twisted her mind; it isn’t easy to turn away from something that addictive, that powerful, that desirable. It isn’t easy to turn away from a lifetime of bloodshed, killing, coin, of believing you have no choice._

_If not for Jocheved, he wonders where he’d be now. What he’d be doing. Whether he’d have found the strength to stop. To be alone, with no purpose... it can be dangerous._

_Billie has no one but herself._

_“If she steps foot in this house,” his mother says when he doesn’t answer, “I’ll kill her myself.”_

_“Shame,” Daud murmurs. “I think you’d have gotten along.”_

* * *

The blade isn't deep enough to draw blood, but it is enough to make me stop talking.

“If you’re here for Daud,” she snarls, full of rage and bitterness and grief, “you’re too late. He’s gone.”

“I know,” I say. “I know he’s missing. I’m not here to hurt him. Please, ma’am –”

She throws her head back with a laugh. “Do I look like a _ma’am_ to you? Don’t fuck with me, girl. I know who you are, Billie Lurk – and I know what you did to my son.”

I see Daud didn’t flatter me in the fifteen years since. I deserve it, but it hurts.

“I’ve been tasked by the Duke of Serknonos to investigate and end the Eyeless Gang threat,” I say. “I have reason to believe Daud is associated with them. I – I want to find him. That’s all. I swear.”

The old woman keeps her blade in my gut as she listens to my words. Then, very slowly, she pulls it back. I release the breath I was holding, and she slashes the blade across my left cheek faster than I can react.

“ _Outsider’s eyes –_ _!_ ”

“You know what that was for,” the old woman snaps as I stagger backwards, clutching my stinging face. The wound isn’t deep but it’s already bleeding profusely. Through the pain, I watch her sheath the blade back in the handle of her cane. “Now get inside before I change my mind.”

To her credit, she tends to the wound immediately. It won’t scar, probably, but it does need stitches.

“Flinch and I’ll take your eye out,” she warns as she sutures the slash she inflicted. Now that I have time to observe her while she works, I can see the resemblance, the shadow of Daud’s face in her harsh Pandyssian features. It’s easy to imagine her as a younger woman, a female version of Daud, without his deformed chin.

“How long has Daud been missing?” I ask.

“A few months before Delilah usurped the throne.”

“Did he tell you where he was going before he vanished?”

The woman’s lips thin. “No.”

That’s no surprise. A man in his fifties isn’t going to tell his mother everything. It’s nothing personal against the woman who bore and raised him – that’s just who he was. Is. There had been a time when I thought Daud told me everything. He trusted me with a blade, his powers, and, sometimes, his thoughts, until I turned the blade on him, used his powers against my brothers and sisters, and sold his thoughts to Delilah. This old woman with hard features and a cruel tongue is right to want me dead for what I did to her son. I’d want me dead, too, if someone else had done to Daud what I did to him.

“All he said was that he had something he needed to do. A loose end he needed to tie up.”

She hands me a mirror when she’s done. For a woman with no eyesight, her stitch work is probably better than Anton’s and Hypatia’s at their best. “Thank you.”

“You think my son is alive.”

I set the mirror aside. I find myself reaching for my bag to withdraw the silvergraph, but realise halfway through the movement there’s no point in showing it to her. “The Duke of Serkonos discovered a picture of him,” I explain. “It was taken recently. He’s connected somehow to the underground Eyeless Gang fighting rings. I’m trying to retrace his steps and this was his last known location.”

She leads me upstairs and feels her way through the set of keys she carries to find the right one to unlock the door of his bedroom – Daud’s _bedroom_ , what a strange concept – and allows me entry.

“Listen to the audiograph first,” she tells me. “I’ll be waiting downstairs when you’re done.”

The room is coated in a layer of dust, but it doesn’t feel abandoned or haunted. His mother left it untouched all this time, waiting for him to return – the books lining the shelves, the framed antique maps he’d clearly hung up on the walls by hand, souvenirs and trinkets from local marketplaces. A battered copy of the _Knife Of Dunwall_ penny dreadful, with ink annotations in Daud’s handwriting all through its pages, pointing out the things it got right and the things it got wrong. I’ve read it cover to cover; it’s a worthless piece of crap, but one of the Whalers must’ve written it because it gets too much right to have been penned by a stranger. It’s wrong about Daud’s preferences for both drink and sex – he indulged in our whisky nights and I looked the other way on those rare occasions when he needed to visit the Golden Cat. Perhaps Daud found the book amusing; another souvenir of a past he’d left behind.

He even kept his own old WANTED poster from Dunwall. A relic? A reminder? A warning? He hadn’t thought it looked much like him – “Too handsome,” he’d commented – but I’d never considered him ugly the way he claimed himself to be. His face, though hard and scarred, had always seemed interesting to me, fascinating in the same way I found the cracked pots pieced back together with gold in the Natural History Museum beautiful, the wear and tear on proud display.

I load the audiograph up and play it while I rifle through his dusty documents. Newspaper cuttings, book pages torn out and circled, maps and receipts. They all have one thing in common: Delilah Copperspoon.

“ _Jocheved_ ,” Daud’s voice fills the room. “ _If you’re listening to this, it’s been more than a week and I haven’t returned. Don’t panic. Don’t try to find me. And don’t go to the guards. Something bad is happening in Karnaca, and chances are, I couldn’t stop it._ ”

The recording is a year old, if that, and it’s him. It’s really his voice. Not a fifteen-year-old memory, not a younger man’s voice frozen in time. That was him, making a recording in this very room, less than a year ago. He sounds older, gruffer. But also, somehow, kinder and softer. His tone is gentle, warm, as though the past fifteen years in the company of his mother, eating regular meals and sleeping in a real bed and sunbathing naked on a balcony, were good to him.

_“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to – I didn’t intend to do this to you. Not again. Just know that if I don’t come back, it wasn’t by choice. And now you need to put your head down, stay quiet, and keep yourself safe. I’ve stashed a few thousand coins under the third floorboard in my room and some authentic Sokolov paintings that you can pawn for cash. Don’t throw my documents out. Someone might come by one day who can use them. Ima, I...”_

A long silence. At first I think the recording is over, but then he continues: _“It doesn’t matter. You already know. I hope you don’t have to play this recording. I’ll see you again soon.”_

The recording clicks and ends.

“Oh, Daud,” I breathe. “You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you, you stupid old man.”

Neither could I, I suppose, but the thing is – I didn’t help Emily reclaim her throne because I was trying to redeem myself for my part in the Empress’s death. Jessamine Kaldwin’s death tore Daud up inside, left him a shadow of his former self – or so I’d thought in my arrogance and delusions, my heart poisoned by Delilah’s honeyed words and my mind impervious to the concept of regret, so foreign and distasteful a sentiment to see consuming the man I admired so much.

I wasn’t the first street kid to join the Whalers, but I was the first to show promise. That's not me bragging, being full of myself – that’s what Daud himself told me, and Void, I'll never forget the way hearing that made me feel. So fucking proud. Like I was worth something, like my life meant something, for the first time since Deidre. He took me in, trained me himself. I took to the life quickly. Perhaps a little desperately, too. I got stronger, faster, but it wasn't for myself – it was always for him, for his approval, trying to impress him. I turned harder. I turned colder. And I liked wearing that mask. A face I could wear, because my own was nothing.

Daud talked a lot about choices in his last audiograph. I must have played it a hundred times until I'd memorised every single word, every cadence of his voice, every pause, every aching syllable of his regret. For a long time I thought I'd never had a choice at all to be what I was, what Daud made me, what Delilah made me do, because the Outsider made them both. It makes a certain amount of sense, blaming that black-eyed bastard for the havoc he’s wreaked upon the world. Or maybe I just liked not holding myself accountable for my decisions. I let Daud turn me into a killer – I wasn't even sure I liked killing, but I was good at it and I liked it when I made him proud. I let Delilah turn me into one of her sycophantic witches – I didn't want to be a witch, but I liked the way her words made me feel as good as the way her lips felt on mine.

I chose to help Emily but it wasn’t _about_ her, it wasn’t _about_ the Isles, it wasn’t _about_ redemption; it was about me, proving that I held no more feelings for the witch. Proving that Daud had been right to give me a second chance, because even now, all these years later, I still want his approval.

Part of me resents him. His hands did violence but there was a different dream in his heart, and he eventually followed it. He got to walk away. He got to find peace, he got to spend his years after Dunwall growing soft and old, reunited with his mother and free of his guilt and bloody past and the Outsider’s attentions. He freed me but I spent my years alone and ashamed, captaining a ship in search of something, anything, to fill that emptiness inside of me since the day I betrayed him.

But I’ve had fifteen years to get my shit together; it’s not his fault that I couldn’t. Maybe there was never anything in my heart but ash and dust.

* * *

* * *

His journal indicated he planned to visit the Conservatory. Knowing what I know now, thanks to my time helping Emily retrace Delilah’s steps in Karnaca to dismantle her support network, that was around the time Breanna Ashworth came into prominence and blinded the Sisters of the Oracular Order from the truth. The new grand conservator, hand-picked by Attano herself, grants me entry into the sealed archives when I flash the Duke’s seal. It’s kind of nice, just showing someone a piece of paper and being obeyed – a nice change from sneaking around in the shadows and slipping in through windows at night.

Out of all my careers – thief, assassin, captain – information-gathering has always been what I’m best at. It’s what made me so valuable to Daud, to Emily, and now to Duke Attano. Deep in the sealed files, I find a silvergraph of Breanna Ashworth – and in the background, a human-sized marble statue of a man, his scarred face cast in stone and his hands outreached, as though caught in a last, hopeless attempt to survive the one fight he realised he couldn’t win. The statue stayed at the Conservatory for several months, then shortly before Delilah usurped the throne, Ashworth gifted it to the opera singer Shan Yun for his public support of the new regime. The statue spent some time in the foyer of his home, until it was moved to the Spector Club for its grand re-opening during Delilah’s reign. Yun spends most of his hours these days in the club with the City Administrator Ivan Jacobi, partaking in various occult rituals with the Eyeless Gang – believing he’s communicating with the Outsider.

I used to dream of the day the Outsider would appear to me. To find me as interesting as Daud, to gift me with my own powers so I wouldn’t have to leech off the old man, to be proud of something that was all my own. But now – now I think if he appeared before me, I’d try to kill him.

Isn’t that a novel idea – killing a God. The Abbey claims the Outsider is the cause of the world’s problems, the root of misfortune and depravity. I used to think it was dogma, religious idiocy, but maybe there is something to it after all, loathe as I am to agree with the Overseers. The Outsider Marked Daud and Daud turned to killing for coin, using his powers to become the most feared assassin to ever stalk the streets of Dunwall. The Outsider Marked Delilah and Delilah used her powers to fuel her ambition, to wreak havoc upon the world. And what for? Because he was bored? Because he was intrigued, and craved entertainment, even if it meant the world would crumble to darkness with his powers in the wrong person’s hands? Without him there wouldn’t be the Eyeless Gang, forged from the remnants of Delilah’s witches and sycophants, no Outsider-worshippers who dabble in human sacrifice and blood rituals.

Would the Outsider’s absence end the depravity, the madness? An idea for another time, perhaps. All I know for sure is that no one should ever have the power Delilah wielded.

Delilah’s spell must have broken when Emily ended her reign. By all accounts, the Duke of Serkonos had been out of commission for weeks – practically bedridden while he recovered. He’d only been trapped for a fraction of the time Daud had been imprisoned by Delilah’s cold marble; if the man who bested the Knife of Dunwall while he was poisoned half to death was that affected by the spell, I can only imagine how weak Daud must have been – powerless, alone, and trapped, surrounded by Delilah’s witches and loyalists.

From the club, I trace Ivan and Shan back to Albarca Baths – a front for the secretive underground fighting rings, and the Eyeless Gang’s primary source of income. I ended up getting one of those tattoos to be able to walk around freely in the arena. I’ve come on a busy night, the stands filling up with rowdy spectators – former witches, gang members, wealthy aristocrats, politicians. The betting board in particular takes my eye:

_Fighter: BLACK MAGIC BRUTE  
Time & Match: 10:00 Match 8_  
_Stake: 7 coin to WIN with KILL_  
_All bets by house rules_

“You’re new,” the pundit observes. “First-time better?”

“Yes,” I say. I gesture to the board. “Tell me about the Black Magic Brute.”

“Safe choice,” he says. “He’s never lost a fight.”

I place a bet and join the crowd.

Attano, presumably, believes the worst of Daud; that he never stopped killing, that he had the same old grudges. I wish that was the reality. I wish that Daud had had a choice in this. I wish I could have looked down into the cage and seen a man who had fallen back into old habits but at least made the conscious decision to do so. What I see instead –

He’s in chains. Buckled under a suppression field of soundwaves adapted from the Overseer music boxes, locked in a cage three levels below ground. He looks strong, yet somehow weak. Deadly, yet deathly pale. It must have been months, maybe a year, since he last saw the sun, breathed fresh air.

I should be more upset that he has no choice in his captivity, that he’s clearly been forced to fight like a rabid hound, but absurdly, the only thing I can focus on is that he can’t see the sky. No windows. No holes in the roof for him to look up at the stars.

Daud always loved the stars. I caught him a few times, at night, lying on his bed and staring up at the sky through the hole in the roof of our base. I needled him for years about that damn hole, we all did, but Daud always muttered something about not having time or patience to fix it. But on my night patrols, I saw him. He’d raised his hand to the sky, reaching up to it as if he wanted to touch the stars, in that moment his expression unguarded, somehow both soft and sad despite the rare smile on his mouth. It was before the Empress’s death at his hands – before I thought he was losing his grip. I liked seeing that odd, soft side to him; such a personal, private moment that I shared with him in secret. I allowed him his innocent indulgence, forgave him for his softness; later in my arrogance, I would recall it as weakness, pathetic sentiment, but who doesn’t like the stars? I need them to navigate my ship; he needed them to forget who and what he was, if only for a few moments.

He doesn’t even have that anymore.

The chains are removed and the suppression field cuts out, and Daud’s cocky opponent charges at him with lethal intent. Daud pushes himself to his feet, grips his left wrist, and Blinks away to another corner of the cage with half a second to spare. The crowd goes wild, cheering and jeering and screaming.

“No weapons?” I murmur, watching Daud jump around the cage, first to evade, then to tire, then to trap his opponent.

“See that mark on his left hand? He’s been touched by the Outsider. It’s what gives him his magic. He knows it’s what makes him valuable to us. He tried to cut off his own hand last time we gave him a blade, so now we keep him on a tight leash.”

I can tell the moment Daud’s magic starts to run dry. He Blinks less and less, resorts more to the hand-to-hand brawling style that he taught me before he felt me ready for the arcane bond. He takes a few bad hits, then finally feints a Blink and stuns his surprised opponent and breaks his arm, dropping him to his knees.

The crowd hollers: “ _KILL! KILL! KILL!_ ”

He doesn’t. He just stands over the man foolish enough to think he could have beaten him, breathing hard.

“For fuck’s sake, not this again,” the pundit mutters. “KILL HIM, YOU DUMB FUCKING BRUTE!”

“What happens if he doesn’t? Or won’t?” I ask.

“He will. He knows what the consequences are if he doesn’t.”

“ _KILL! KILL! KILL!_ ”

Daud eventually obeys the crowd, but he makes it quick – snaps his opponent’s neck with a sharp, sudden movement. Half the crowd cheers, the other half who wanted the Black Magic Brute to draw it out longer boos, and the suppression field reactivates, filling the chamber with its agonising magic-blocking soundwaves. Daud is driven to his hands and knees beside the man he just murdered, shuddering and trembling under the field, immobilised for his handler to chain him like a prized fighting hound.

“Your winnings,” the pundit tells me after the crowds have filtered out and all that’s left is a skeleton crew of gang members. He hands me a small pouch.

I pocket the coins. Then I drive my blade through his throat.

The others are easy to take care of. I take the books, the records of transactions and fighting bets; all useful. I find the key to the suppression box and turn it off. Daud slumps with a groan and I jump down into the pit to free him of his chains.

“Lurk,” he murmurs as I help him sit up. “It’s really you.” He looks at the bodies of my victims, slaughtered indiscriminately. In the old days, he might’ve been proud of me, but now – I wonder if he’s judging me, disappointed that I’m not a better person. If he is, he doesn’t say.

“It’s really me, old man.”

“I thought I was hallucinating.” He touches a shaking hand to the stitched cut on my cheek. “What happened to your face?”

“Your mother,” I say, taking his hand. “She sends her regards.”

Daud’s face flickers with something painful and complicated. “Jocheved,” he murmurs. “She’s – alive.”

“Yeah – and real fucking pissed off at you.”

He huffs a laugh, then coughs, then turns his head to the side to spit up black rock and slime.

“What is that?”

He wipes his mouth dry with the back of his torn sleeve. “Cold marble and Void matter. Been coughing it up since I unfroze.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything resembling this sort of anger. “You were free,” I suddenly snap at him. “You got away. You could’ve stayed on your balcony with your dick to the sun but you couldn’t fucking stay away from the bullshit, could you. What the _hell_ were you thinking, going after Delilah on your own?”

“Killed her once,” he says gruffly. “Thought I could do it again and make it permanent.”

“You damn old fool.”

He just smiles. “I missed you, Billie.”

I’ll yell at him another time. Or let his mother do it for me. I readjust his arm over my shoulder, walking him out of this Void-forsaken place. “C’mon. Let’s get you out of here.”

Outside, free of that den of hedonism and sadism, the sky is clear and the hour late. As soon as we hit the street, he breaks away from me. He staggers forwards and finally collapses to his knees, striking hard against the stone, a grunt in his throat and tears in his eyes when he turns his face to the sky as he lifts a shaking hand to the stars.

* * *

* * *

I help him home. There’s plenty to talk about but neither of us were particularly good at saying what needed to be said to each other’s faces. He stops every now and then to hack up some more stone and Void slime, slowing us down so we don’t reach his mother’s apothecary until the stars are almost gone and the sun is beginning to peek over the horizon, and once we’re there I have to stop her from slapping him.

“You stupid, _wretched_ boy,” she snarls in Daud’s direction, hitting my hand away. “How many times do I have to go through this? How could you do this to me again, you piece of _shit_ , I wish you’d never come back into my life at all –”

“Ima,” Daud rasps.

Jocheved’s furious expression cracks. “Oh, Daud,” she chokes, holding her arms out for him. “Daud, come here.”

I shouldn’t be seeing them embrace. It feels too private – too personal. I never had a problem with that in the past; I spied on him, read his journal, listened to his audiographs and watched him smiling sadly at the stars at night. But that was a long time ago, and I don’t have the right anymore. Before I can slip away and disappear into the shadows, Jocheved turns her face to my direction, her milky white eyes staring straight through me.

“Billie,” she says. “Thank you.”

I don’t know how to respond to that. _You’re welcome_ seems too pithy; _it was no trouble_ is a lie. I nod and leave. The rest of the Eyeless Gang isn’t going to dismantle itself.

It takes less than a week; impressive, even for me. “Detailed files on the upper-ranking members,” I inform the Duke, dropping a stack of files and documents on his desk when I’m done. “All known bases marked on the maps, safehouses, and passwords. The leaders are dead, and their main source of income was the fighting ring in the baths. It’s been dismantled.”

Attano skims the files. “And Daud?” he finally asks.

“Not your concern.”

He pins me with a dark look. “I wanted you to find out how and why he was involved. If you’re protecting him –”

“I am,” I say. “You have no reason to put him down. He’ll leave you alone if you leave him alone.”

Attano stares at me, probably contemplating following through on his threat to have my face plastered on every wall of every street in every city in the Empire. But then he huffs and slides a bag of coins over to me. “You did good work, Lurk.”

I know I did.

“I could use someone with your skills in my office.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Me?”

“Spymaster position is vacant at the moment, and I’m short on people I can trust.”

“You don’t trust me. You don’t even like me.”

“You helped my daughter survive a coup and navigate a hostile foreign city so she could reclaim her throne. You didn’t run when I summoned you to the palace to take on a cult. I might not like you, Billie Lurk, but I think you’re after honest work. I trust that.”

I don’t say yes. But I don’t say no, either. Even after sleeping on it, I don’t know how I feel about the offer. Mid-morning, Jocheved welcomes me into her home and this time doesn’t slash her blade at my face. She directs me to the balcony but neglected to mention I’d get treated to an eyeful of Daud’s ass. Hmm. Should’ve knocked. Fortunately, he doesn’t turn around.

“Could've happily gone the rest of my life without seeing your behind, Daud,” I say, strolling up beside him, taking care not to stare at, well, him. “I can’t believe your mother lets you parade around her house buck naked.”

Daud inhales on his cigarette, exhales, and manages a small smile. “What does she care? She’s blind.” He holds the cigarette out for me. “You should try it.”

I say nothing about the deep bruises that still mark his body and the scars that riddle his back, the worst of the wounds his blind mother stitched up and bandaged for him, nothing about the way his hand trembles. The hands that were forced to kill for entertainment, forced to turn to violence for survival, after so many years living in peace. I wonder how long this will haunt him; how many months or years he has left to work through it. I take the cigarette and a long draw.

“I prefer to sunbathe nude on the privacy of my ship,” I say, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

He takes the cigarette back and puffs on it some more, his eyes squinted against the sunlight he’d been deprived of for a year. “So what did the Duke of Serkonos have to say for himself?”

“He’s glad the Gang has collapsed. Paid me the other half of my fee, then he offered me a job as his Spymaster.”

“Going legit, huh, Billie?”

“Depends on whether I think he’s more amusing than he is a giant fucking prick,” I say. “Been there, done that, you know?”

Daud snorts. “You’d be good at it,” he says.

I liked gathering intel, piecing together information, I always have. Not sure yet if it filled that hole, but for the first time in a long time, I’d felt – satisfied. Competent. In a way, proud of myself; something I’ve never felt before. It’s addictive. The idea of legitimate work, something for me, not for anyone else – not Daud, not Emily, not Attano – is a seductive one, more than the clean slate and the coin.

More than Daud’s approval. It’s a strange feeling. “I told him I’d think about it.”

He puffs on the cigarette again, turns his head to the side to cough. He spits out some more stone and Void matter, and flicks the stub over the edge of the balcony. He leans forward with his elbows braced on the barrier, bowing his head. “Thank you.”

“For what.”

“You could’ve ignored it all, Emily, Delilah, Corvo, me, the whole lot, and gone on sailing your ship, living your life in peace. You didn’t... have to save me. But you did, and I’m grateful.”

There’s only one thing that unwanted and abused child, that lonely and angry teenage girl, that broken and burned-out woman wanted. It was never about becoming the best thief or the greatest assassin or a powerful witch, it wasn’t about becoming the captain of a ship, it wasn’t about a clean fucking slate.

“It was the least I owed,” I say, because it sounds less pathetic than _it was about you._

He sounds surprised. “You think you owe me?”

“Don’t I? What I broke between us, Daud, I –”

“Billie, whatever you’re going to say, there’s no need. I forgave you the moment you knelt before me and held out your sword so I could take your life. There’s no debt between us.”

I forgave him the moment he refused to take my life, and set me free instead. I close my eyes. “Daud...”

“I can’t tell you what to do anymore,” Daud says, “but I wonder if you’ve ever thought to forgive yourself.”

I inhale. Exhale. “You need a shave,” I tell him, reaching out to graze the ragged stubble on his jawline with my fingers.

“Hmm,” he grunts. He doesn’t withdraw from my touch. “You offering?”

“Only if you put some pants on first.”

He laughs. So do I.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: maybe this will be fun [plays DOTO after 3.5 years stubbornly refusing to play it]  
> [1 hour later]  
> Me: oh absolutely fucking not [quits the game and immediately writes an AU to do right by Billie and Daud]
> 
> Look. I haven't written _Dishonored_ fanfic since 2017, so I appreciate that DOTO inspired me enough to get me to finally write a sequel to _the parabola of lost seasons_ , but that's it so far. (If you haven't read _parabola_ first, you should; this fic make a lot more sense with it.)
> 
> The amazing artwork of Daud looking at the stars belongs to [Sphyrne](https://sphyrne.tumblr.com/post/626451880260894720/). It was drawn independently of this fic, but I have their permission to include it here because it's just so thematically perfect for this series, THANK YOU MY FRIEND! Everyone should go check out their blog, which is full of beautiful _Dishonored_ art. Daud's WANTED poster is just there to remind everyone that Arkane did us and Daud dirty by making him look like a potato in DOTO.
> 
> Anyway I hope you enjoyed this fic! If you like my writing, come follow me on my [Tumblr](https://hlmoorewrites.tumblr.com/deathsembrace) \- I've written a book! Actually I've written two!


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